The use of Barrel Bombs

by Austin Michael Bodetti. He is a student in the Gabelli Presidential Scholars Program at Boston College and a reporter for War Is Boring. He focuses on the relationship between Islam and conflict in Syria and Sudan.

The barrel bomb has become the most notorious weapon in the Syrian Civil War, namely the Battle of Aleppo. An unguided bomb composed of a barrel-shaped metal container filled with explosives and sometimes chemicals, oil, and shrapnel, this example of state terrorism has fueled much of the mass migration from Syria to Europe and elsewhere. Barrel bombs have a long history spanning Israel, the United States, Sri Lanka, Croatia, and Sudan, a gruesome reminder of war’s barbarity.

The first engineers of barrel bombs lived in Mandatory Palestine, where Jews and Muslims fought one another and the British government for authority. The National Military Organization in the Land of Israel (Irgun), a Zionist revolutionary movement often regarded as one of the first terrorist organizations in modern history, used these explosives to thwart British ambitions and efforts in the Holy Land. The Israeli Air Force would then bomb Palestinians with the same weapons during the First Arab–Israeli War.

Army crews kicked the incendiary drums out of Chinook helicopters onto suspected enemy camps. They strapped white phosphorus smoke grenades to the cylinders to set them alight. The Air Force took the concept one step further and tried to start raging forest fires in Viet Cong base areas. The flying branch used fire barrels as well as normal incendiary bombs.

Thereby, the United States Air Force pioneered dropping barrel bombs from helicopters as the Syrian government often does. Even so, The Washington Post distinguished between America in Vietnam and the Syrian government in its own civil war: “The barrel bombings in Vietnam were not aimed at heavily populated areas, and did not exact the human costs that the Assad regime probably has in its desperate fight with rebel forces.” Barrel bombs in Vietnam showed an advanced counterinsurgent with air supremacy and high technology flaunted its superiority over scattered, weakened insurgents.

Barrel bombs would evolve into cheap, effective weapons for the Third World to fight the many insurgencies that plagued it. The Sri Lankan Armed Forces used barrel bombs to strike the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in the Jaffa Peninsula during the Sri Lankan Civil War. “The strafing, from Bell-412 helicopter gunships, is relatively state-of-the-art, with sudden swoops disrupting funeral processions, emptying streets, picking off old men at crossroads,” described historian William Dalrymple. “But as the Sri Lankan Air Force has no modern bombers, the bombing is a lot less hi-tech. […] The slow, lumbering aircraft carry home-made three-hundred-kilogram bombs, packed into wooden barrels. These are rolled manually out of the cargo hatch — simple, but effective nonetheless.” The Sri Lankan government defeated the Tamil Tigers with brutality and simplistic characteristic of conflicts between failed states and terrorist organizations, barrel bombs forming part of the Sri Lankan military’s strategy.

As ethnic conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils inspired barrel bombs as a weapon of convenience, the Yugoslav Wars saw their use by separatists fighting the federal government. Human Rights Watch noted Croatian rebels using boiler bombs, variants of barrel bombs, against Serbian soldiers, even dropping some from a makeshift air force.

This image posted by the anti-government Twitter account @Barq_iq_sy (the account is now blocked) show what appear to be improvised barrel bomb, dropped by the Iraqi Air Force on Fallujah.

Barrel bombs have earned the Syrian government deserved notoriety in the international community. An Alawi colonel long considered a war criminal likely masterminded their use by the Syrian Arab Air Force, hoping to retake rebel-controlled parts of Aleppo. They have even hit hospitals as the Syrian military tries to punish civilians who support the Syrian opposition. When the Syrian Arab Air Force seems to be refining its tactics with a double tap — dropping a barrel bomb, then waiting for first responders to gather, then dropping another barrel bomb — it may be reluctant to stop them.

The Iraqi government is mimicking its Syrian counterpart, striking the territory of the Islamic State with barrel bombs at least six times June and July last year. These bombings have continued into this year. The Iraqi government, like the Syrian government, has acted with impunity. The U.S. and other Western countries continue to arm and defend it as Iran and Russia do the Syrian government. The international community has yet to challenge the use of barrel bombs in Syria with military might. Without it, this war crime will likely continue for months to come.

4 Responses to The use of Barrel Bombs

Wikipedia has an accurate definition of “war crime“: “A war crime is an act that constitutes a serious violation of the law of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility. Examples of war crimes include intentionally killing civilians or prisoners, torture, wantonly destroying property, taking hostages, perfidy, rape, using child soldiers, pillaging, declaring that no quarter will be given, and using weapons that cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering.”

In case of Syria, and most likely also in other cases, the use of barrel bombs constitute a war crime because civilians are intentionally targeted and it causes unnecessary suffering. Would a Mk 83 be used to intentionally destroy civilian infrastructure, for example a hospital, it would be rated as a war crime, too. But the use of a Mk 83 to destroy a military target, even in case of collateral damage, does not constitute a war crime.

As if the Syrian government targets its own civilians. What would they gain by it? Nothing, only loose support. But on the other hand when terrorists have taken over a city or neighborhood they are targeted with airstrikes despite civilians still being there. Like it is in all wars.
And the barrel bombs dropped from helicopters were about the most precise weapon the Syrian airforce had in it’s inventory. Compared to their ancient mig 21s.

I hope nobody was fooled by the chemical attack that our media still blames on Assad. They are about the only ones in the world, and people that repeat them. Even the UN team that investigated the chemical attacks said that the rebels were most likely responsible. The rebels also showed in YouTube videos the year before the attacks that they were producing chemical gasses for use as weapon. And videos were they tested the gas on Guinea pigs and rabbits.

Warcrime? It’s only a war crime if you lose the war. What about the bombing of civilians in Yugoslavia during the 1999 campain, trains and schools, bridges and heating plants. Nothing was safe.

Was the firebombing of Hamburg, Leipzig and Dresden a war crime? I don’t remember anybody answering for those? Even McNamara stated that the firebombings in Japan at the hands of the allies were clear warcrimes ( he should know, he participated in the planning and executions of said bombing runs).